If you’re new to the digital world – which we all were once – my first piece of advice to you is to take a deep breath. Better?

Now, you may have noticed that this industry has its own language, and by language I mean clusters of letters that may or may not mean something to someone – because let me tell you, they didn’t mean anything to me at first either. But you’ll catch on, I promise.

To get you started, here are a few of those terms that you’ll see most often:

1. Key Performance Indicator

Odds are you haven’t actually heard anyone say this because it’s sort of a mouthful, but I am sure you’ve seen the letters KPI. A KPI is a metric used to evaluate how they are performing, based on industry standards. KPIs allow organizations to define goals and measure progress.

2. Impressions

This is the number of times your ad or creative was displayed.

3. Reach

The reach of any campaign, ad, or piece of content is the number of unique impressions it receives. What this means is how many new sets of eyes have seen your ad.

4. Click-Through Rate

The CTR is a ratio that will show you how often people who see your ad end up clicking it.

5. Cost Per Mille

CPM stands for cost per 1000 impressions. Display advertising is usually sold on a CPM basis. If you place an ad at $2 CPM and that add receives 10,000 impressions, the total price paid is $20.

6. Cost Per Click

Like CPM, CPC is the price paid per click-through. When placing an ad you can set a max CPC – this is the highest amount you are willing to pay per-click. Your actual CPC is determined by a number of other factors – but we’ll leave that for another day.

Well, I hope this helped and that you know a little more than when you clicked on our blog. To keep learning, be sure to check back weekly for new posts!